Opinion-based decisions: how are they masked?
Opinion-based decisions are often disguised as fact-based decisions. […]A common example of such a substitution in business is an appeal to the "collective intelligence" or to the wisdom of experts (internal or external). In this case, the decision is made on the basis of voting or subjective ranking of ideas, which is based on our ideas about what is happening. Some problem solving techniques even encourage this.
Imagine that you are choosing a restaurant that you could go to with a company. “Consensus” can be easily reached on this issue - the place that the majority chooses will, on average, give the group the most pleasure. Hivemind works well at maximizing preferences, but unfortunately it is often used in other situations where it is completely inappropriate. Once in the hospital, you are unlikely to interrogate a dozen random people you meet to decide which incision to start with. A good surgeon plans treatment based on facts - data about his patient and his own knowledge of anatomy.
The catch in the restaurant example is that the facts are people's personal preferences. The definition of the problem is: "We don't know which restaurant most of us will like." To reach a consensus, you need to gather facts on this issue. In certain cases, the goal is precisely the maximization of preferences - when the personal choice of each is equated with a real fact. When the goal is different, you will not be able to solve the problem by focusing only on opinions.
Sometimes people make decisions based on their own or someone else's assumptions about the facts, but do not check the facts themselves. This is a special problem - the assumption of something that supposedly "everyone knows". […]
The pitfalls of opinion-based decisions
In business, it is not uncommon to see decisions made on the basis of opinions lead to all kinds of troubles. The company is putting together a group to brainstorm a long list of ideas for further work. They then set priorities, often based on the subjective opinions of the audience - for example, asking everyone to vote for three items from a list and then picking the ones with the most votes. Wouldn't it be better to do some mathematical analysis and evaluate which of the options will most affect the company's performance, and based on this, determine priorities? Only by using facts can we understand what exactly is the most objective value for the business.Opinion-based solutions are also perplexing when they are mistakenly attempted to be applied to practical problems. For example, people in my city, when they think about going to visit with their child, worry about whether there is a firearm in this house, and do not worry about the pool at all. […]
High-quality and low-quality search for facts
Collecting information that allows you to understand everything and make a decision is the basis of any work with a problem. You need to get the facts you need to understand what needs to be changed or corrected. A good factual search will allow you to quickly move to the root cause of the problem; poor quality will create confusion and lead you into the wild.We once worked with a specialized manufacturing company that sold parts to other businesses. This company planned to move its activities from Western Europe to Eastern Europe in order to take advantage of cheap labor. All the facts related to the production cost reduction were taken into account and understood, but the company at first did not take into account other variables and almost made a big mistake.
After collecting data on how the move would affect lead times, the company found that lead times would increase significantly. A survey of the most valuable clients showed that most of them consider fast execution of orders a priority and that the current deadlines are the main reason for their loyalty. The company revised plans and not only saved a lot of time and money, but also used these resources to further reduce the lead time, which allowed it to take a favorable position in the market and increase the profit margin in its product segment.
Let's dig deeper
First of all, make sure that the information you collect is completely true. In particular, if the condition contains large amounts of data, a good problem solver will continually ascertain whether the hard facts reflect the information that comes from sensors, from research, and so on. Quite often people solving problems are faced with “data” that has been thoroughly processed and no longer corresponds to the real state of affairs.Several years ago, my team members worked with a company that specializes in the supply of protective coatings. The company's phone was torn apart by calls from angry customers. Some of them were so disappointed with the collaboration that they even changed suppliers.
Customer service specialists knew that people were complaining about long delivery times, but the statistics did not confirm this: the indicators of timeliness and completeness of deliveries in the company were 98%, that is, in 98 cases out of 100, the client received his order on time and in full. This was the highest result in the industry, and the situation naturally caused bewilderment. It turned out that one understaffed or late order out of fifty had such a noticeable effect on the overall level of service?
We checked the customer support call logs and found that almost all of the complaints were due to delivery delays. This made us question the accuracy of the company's statistics. The team carefully studied the code of the program that generated the delivery reports, and found out that the system calculates the timeliness and completeness of the delivery based on the last entered delivery date, and not the one that was discussed initially. Delivery service managers negotiated with customers about changing dates, and the program used this updated data to compile the report. When the team corrected the code, it turned out that the real rate of delivery on time was only 37%. They used this up-to-date data to find critical links in the entire chain along which the product moved from supplier to consumer, and ultimately resolved a key customer dissatisfaction issue. […]
Relevance check
The facts you are looking for should be relevant and relevant to your problem. Very often I see people burrowing headlong into data received from computers, in the hope that this or that information will lead them to interesting conclusions. There is nothing wrong with using statistical analysis as a tool, and the ability to process large amounts of data helps a lot to move towards the goal. But you still need to understand: relying on something, even statistics, you still make guesses.What is a relevant fact? It is a fact that answers the question you asked and takes you to the next step in the problem-solving process. Once you find the variable you want, you need to get the facts to get a clear idea of its dynamics and what controls it. Do not waste your efforts trying to find in analyzing everything that catches your eye.
Once upon a time, before cheap sensors and large amounts of data were available, good problem solvers knew how to extract facts. Today, you don't have to blindly rely on data streams to be a good problem solver. When you measure and study a subject on your own and without haste, your brain focuses more effectively on the task at hand and does not try to grab onto anything by default. To some extent, this is a matter of concentration and discipline.
Avoid bias
The last major obstacle to quality facts is our biases. While we may not always be able to test a solution based on opinions or assumptions, perceptional bias can noticeably interfere with solving a problem. I'm sure you've all seen this happen in both corporate and government policy. Good problem solvers know how to recognize situations in which they are thwarted by their own emotions or prejudices.One morning I was helping the children get ready for school and noticed that one of them looked ill. Suspicions overcame me: lately things were not going very well for him at school, and that day he was just about to complete an assignment that worried him very much - it seems that he had to recite a poem by heart. He had already missed school several times and I felt that by the end of the school year he was just a little tired. The teachers also seemed to think he was lazy.
But my wise and patient wife decided to measure his temperature - earlier in our discussion of the "problem", this did not come up at all. And we were surprised to see 38 degrees on the thermometer. Not the end of the world, but quite a good reason to stay at home that day. Hard facts have triumphed over bias. […]
